Adventures in fact-checking for students

Fast Food War

Verifying Identity on Twitter

President Trump made some comments on January 2nd, 2018 about the leader of North Korea:

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

The next day, another account, which claims to represent KFC’s Irish & British branch, made what appeared to be a mocking reference to the tweet:

McDonald’s leader Ronald just stated he has a “burger on his desk at all times”. Will someone from his big shoed, red nosed regime inform him that I too have a burger on my desk, but mine is a box meal which is bigger and more powerful than his, and mine has gravy! #nuclearbutton

To answer this you could read news coverage and see if this story is covered or look at Snopes to see if it has been debunked. But for this activity, try to answer the question just by looking at the Twitter account.

Related Resources

If you have trouble with this task, you may want to review the following resources:

License

All content on this site is released CC BY, for free reuse by educators and publishers. Screenshots are provided under fair use. Other images may be under different licenses, please check the page for more detail.

IMPORTANT NOTE

This site contains prompts for lessons that are meant to be facilitated in a face to face session. The meaning and nature of an exercise can often not be determined by the prompt alone.